


A Way to Live

by bruisedandbrandedsky



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Dirty Talk, Dom!Sherlock, Dom/sub Play, Gags, M/M, Sub!Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:25:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3280091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruisedandbrandedsky/pseuds/bruisedandbrandedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock are roommates, sure, but John wants something more. When Sherlock finds out, it becomes something to do at night; not right exactly, but lovely in its own way -- tense, red, calamitous. But Christmas is coming and the streets are covered in snow. And John is falling in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Way to Live

_It’s not London without the rain_ , John thinks, _that’s for sure_. Not grimy, swallowed up London without a pang of wet dread crawling down the roofs, making the car sirens howl. He takes a step, stops. It’s Thursday. A few scattered children pummel their way through Baker Street. A cyclist is calling out a girl’s name. 

It’s not unmanageable. Not yet. He feels his stomach roiling but small gestures, little waves, barely formed tides coming to him and taking his hands and letting go again, leaving him adrift. It’s like that. He made himself breakfast this morning. Badly burnt toast, then he tried again, and eggs and coffee that stayed in his throat, lined it with warmth. He got dressed before that. He thought of something he wanted to write, struck with a sudden bolt of joy -- _but where would I put it? in the drafts on my phone, a note in my pocket, on my wrist like a schoolgirl_ \-- and was so aflame with the strangeness of the desire that he stood silently in the center of his room til it had passed, eyes closed as if he were remembering a dream. 

It’s not unmanageable, but it’s no way to live. In the mornings he thinks he’s gone deaf, the silent shriek of his brain is so loud. The room hovers over him like anxious relatives, the space is shrunken. He repeats words, sounds them out, til gradually they grow and come clear to him. _I. Am. Here._ He hears the footsteps in the living room and waits until they disappear. They are loud, the loudest thing he’s ever heard. Big thundering heartbeats against the ribs of the floor. He hears the tea set, or the cabinets, or the low and violent speech. Sometimes a glass will break. He lets it wash over him, all that noise. He feels like his bones are alight with it. When it’s quiet again, he feels like he’s been ripped open and sewn back together. 

(Nights are different. At night, he could scream.)

 _Aren’t you some quietly measured thing_ , he thinks kindly, _don’t you just reek of self-restraint_. This is in the afternoon. Tea, a bit of typing, comfortable trousers. In the lengthening daylight, he laughs a little. It feels different: the flat is empty, he is alone. Alone like this, without another body to highlight it. Feels like being deep and sweet underground. He eats a piece of bread, looks at his phone. No texts. No one suddenly coming undone. It’s afternoon. Soon it will be evening, then night, then morning again. 

It is Thursday and it is November. London is tied up in Christmas lights, awash in mulled wine. The glint of ice skates can be twisted into stars. He has been alone all day now, and in a few hours he will go back to his room. It will be like returning to the grave: a warm, sodden grave strewn with mud. 

A cadence plays on the staircase outside and then the door swings open; Sherlock staggers in and the rain comes with him, spraying the room. He shakes his head once, casting off the water. He looks around the room. Catching sight of John, he squints and says, “Oh, you. I thought you’d have gone to bed.”

John laughs a little, though he doesn’t mean it. “Would you like me to?”

Sherlock pauses, still in the arms of the door, looks at John as if checking for an expiration date or a small mistake then shakes his head, passes into the flat. “Been there all day, by the looks of it. Stepped outside once, but thought better of it in the end. You ought to get rid of that.”

“What, staying indoors?”

“No. The jumper.” He takes a tin off the kitchen shelf, examines it, puts it back. Strides into the sitting room, tenses, sits. A moment away, then back again. John can feel his own fingers as if they were weights on his wrists. As if the room were a trap. He says nothing. 

After a moment, Sherlock leans forward and says, “All right, what is it?”

“What?”

“Good lord, sometimes I swear that’s the only word you know. You’ve been nearly twitching since I walked in, and though I grant you this was only two minutes and thirty eight seconds ago, now thirty nine, this is ample time to create a thought and mask it, which is what I’ve had the great misfortune to watch you do in the time cited. I dislike your unhappiness; it taints the flat and distracts me. So let’s have out with it.”

John runs a hand over his mouth, making a gesture meant for another evening. Out of his throat comes a noise he hasn’t heard before. He says, “It’s nothing.”

Sherlock leaps up and covers the distance between them in two quick strides, rolling his eyes ferociously and snaps, “John, I really have limited patience for this dithering you insist on doing whenever you feel threatened.” His breath is shorter now, his eyes leaner. “But fine, we’ll do it your way.” Now facing him, now tightly wound, now verging on something frightening. “Clothes are two days old, so you’ve slept in them -- could mean illness, but more likely means carelessness, or thoughtlessness, yes we’ll go with that because the bags under your eyes indicate you haven’t slept, so resting away a fever it isn’t. Hardly any appetite yesterday, unusual for you. Frequent checking of the phone, but not as though you’re actually looking for something, more of a diversion whenever I’m in the room, so it’s your poor attempt at guiding me away from something you don’t want me to know. A message from Lestrade, perhaps, about me I’d guess if I were paranoid but fortunately for you I’m not, so we’ll say a message from someone else, but as we’re both quite aware that you have very few relationships outside of myself, it’ll be someone I either haven’t met or who doesn’t exist. Ruling out the latter as impossible, we find ourselves presented with the former. Reasons for deception and secrecy: shame, uncertainty, calculation, manipulation, jealousy, ignorance. But as it’s you, the first two seem most probable. All right, then, shame and uncertainty proceeding from unfamiliarity with the matter at hand, so not a case, nor your work, and given the implications of the phone and your, shall we say, unkempt appearance coupled with the frequent regrets of the season, I’ll have to guess lovesick.” He sighs, burdened. “Haven’t got time for it, really. But if it will help you to stop moping, I’ll hear you out. So? Who is it?” He is perched above John awkwardly, like a long and quizzical bird. “Not one of those empty-headed girls you go out with so often.”

“No,” says John. “Not one of them.”

“Then who?” He hovers for a moment, then bends his neck down to meet him halfway, says with a curious note of blackness, “Tell me.”

John shifts his weight, feels the callouses on his hands against his chin, breathes in then out again, says at last, “I think I ought to go to bed.” He gets up as Sherlock steps aside, passes him for the bedroom, his fists clenched and hardened and sad. At the landing he turns for a moment and says, more to do damage to himself than to another, “In the future, don’t even bother asking.”

“I wouldn’t have bothered now,” says Sherlock, who is already looking around the room for something else to amuse him. “The frequency of your troubles is dull.”

Driven by something that terrifies him, John repeats, “'The frequency of my troubles'. Where do you get off, mate? You know what a normal person would have done, right? A normal person would have asked me what I was feeling, rather than ensure I was told. Would have given me half a second to speak, would have let me finish these thoughts I carry round with me all day. Christ, Sherlock, do you know what it’s like? Do you know what it is to wander round this flat all day with this awful, bloody awful pounding in my head of the things I want, and the things I don’t know, when everything that I do see, that shows itself to me, is a reminder of exactly what does not want _me_ \--”

He pauses here, but the damage is done. Sherlock is still and he is watching John with recognition.

“Christ,” says John, like an oath, like a prayer. “Christ.” Like salvation. 

Sherlock stares for a moment, then slips forward, stops a few inches away from John. “A reminder of what does not want you,” he says carefully. His voice is thick, ponderous. He is tall, John remembers now, much taller. He is unwavering, hardly breathing. He is near.

“I think,” says John, slowly, almost inaudibly, “I ought to go to bed.”

In a sharp movement, Sherlock reaches down and takes his arm, brings it up to his lips, studies it. He is not flushed or short of breath. He registers something, tucks it away when he blinks, then he looks at John and he says, “What is there that makes you think I don’t want you?”

The words are so clear that John thinks he’s misheard. He makes a sound, half strangled, then clears his throat and looks at the floor. All his days, now suddenly brown and dull, crumble around his ears, leave their weary brittle corpses on the floor at his feet. He swallows again. He says, “What did you say?”

Sherlock sighs, irritably. “I can only handle so many of your pointless questions at once.” But his voice is gentler now, more like old wood. He touches John’s arm again, purposefully, with caution. “For me, then?” he muses, hardly a question. 

He is so close that John can hardly breathe and is taking his air in short, stuttering gasps that embarrass him, trying in the absurd closeness of the moment not to breathe too heavily on Sherlock, not to draw attention to all the things that have suddenly flared wrong in his body, all these terrible things that might make him change his mind. He manages, “Yes.”

“May I?” Sherlock is asking permission for something, for a gesture John has imagined a thousand times, has turned from a fantasy into a memory, and John mumbles something that could pass for yes again, this word he has mouthed to himself flat on his back in bed, reaching for the contours of Sherlock’s body above him that he has traced in the dark, and now Sherlock leans in and presses his mouth to John’s wrist -- the mouth is damp, thin, small -- draws back and sighs, a different kind now. 

“God,” says John.

“What is it you want?” Sherlock is looking at him now, his mouth slightly wet. John thinks his heart might stop. Then Sherlock grins and says, “Would you like me to deduce it?”

John finds his voice then. “No, no. No.”

“This will be easier if I ask you questions and you respond. Yes?”

“Yes. Yes, I think I can do that.”

“Good. How long?”

“Sorry?”

“How long? Judging from your physical reaction, this did not just occur to you tonight.”

“Ah.” John feels a sudden frenzy of shame numbing his tongue. He thinks, _the strain of your neck at Bart’s_. He thinks, _hands with fingers spread apart just so_. He says, again, “Ah.”

“Focus,” says Sherlock sharply, and John does. “Tell me how long.”

“Long,” says John helplessly. 

“I see. And were you planning on telling me if I hadn’t asked?”

John laughs, a rough stupid sound. “No, of course not. But I’m sure you would have guessed eventually.” He makes a gesture with his eyes, meant to cover all of Sherlock’s body. The thought makes him weak. “As you did.”

Sherlock is paying attention, but only just. He has moved his lips closer to John’s wrist again, running them lightly in the air above, and John groans quietly, getting hard, looking at the ceiling as if to reassure someone he’s only joking. He imagines Sherlock fucking him at night. He imagines Sherlock filling his fist with his hair and curving John’s body to an angle that pleases him. In the mornings, he sees Sherlock in the kitchen and is overcome. He stands speechless with his tea, curling his hands over the empty pretense of what he has made. 

“You want me to fuck you,” Sherlock deduces, which makes them both snort. “Diverting enough. It wouldn’t be difficult.” John groans again and Sherlock ignores it, which makes his body sink with love. “I hear you sometimes in your bedroom. You’d like me to hurt you, I think.” John swears and Sherlock raises an eyebrow, sure but scanning his face for clues. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” says John.

“Not surprising. War, after all -- you gave pain and now you want to receive it. Violence is a tricky thing.” He moves his eyes up John’s arm, to his shoulder, to his neck. He pauses there then extends a finger, traces a small hidden circle at the tip of John’s collarbone. “Is that it?”

“Please,” says John.

“Mm. Very good.” Sherlock’s voice is far away, underwater. “This will be nice.” He steps back, calculates, then clicks into place. His hands are in his pockets; the top button of his shirt is undone. “Come here, John. I want you to kneel in front of me.”

The spasm of the thought sends John reeling, pushes him forward with nothing. He is afraid of that nothing: the minutiae of his embarrassment, where he will direct his gaze, if Sherlock’s touch will feel like the touch of a real body with all its mistakes. He is suddenly afraid of pain. He kneels, wincing; he does not look up.

He hears Sherlock move forward and then he feels Sherlock’s hands in his hair, probing, thoughtful. Sherlock is silent; at last he says, “Tell me how you like it.”

Ashamed, John lashes out, “Can’t you deduce it?”

Immediately the fingers tighten and he feels the burn begin on his scalp then fade. A warning, then; not yet a punishment. “You are hardly in any position to be talking back.” A moment passes and then Sherlock says -- John can hear the smirk, or imagines he can -- “With any luck, there will be very few positions I put you in during which you can talk at all.” He waits for John’s reaction and it comes, the bones tightening, the body sagging. He continues, “I will ask you twice, but not a third time. Tell me how you like it.” The fingers are still there, fraught and beautiful. 

“I like being told what to do,” John mutters, turning red. He pauses and when Sherlock makes no comment, he rushes on. “I like being hurt, and tied up, and punished for things I can’t do. I like,” he finishes suddenly, unable to go on. Specific fantasies come to him unbidden: bound struck gagged whipped blood. He says none of this. He holds it in himself; it is what keeps him afloat.

“Fairly standard,” Sherlock is saying. “Garden variety masochism, but one must start somewhere.” He takes his fingers from John’s hair and brings them to his own waist. “A long time.” He breathes in sharply. “Stay still. I’m going to tie your hands.”

John moves to get up, a fight or flight reaction beyond his control, and he is ashamed, hot and red with longing, but Sherlock knows and he places his hands on John’s shoulders, easing him down, moving his mouth close to John’s ear and murmuring, “This will be much easier for you if you do as you’re told,” and then John hears the bell-like tinkle of his belt unclasping, coming off, and there is a moment of panic until he feels it wrap around his wrists and this draws hims back into himself, into the wonderful dark ocean of what he wants and what Sherlock can give him, not the truth which will come later but the promise that comes now, the moment that comes before pain and desire, the room they are in together. 

When Sherlock is done binding his hands, he steps in front of John again, his trousers looser now, and his fingers unbutton them slowly, torturously, inches from John’s mouth, decisively, as if he were weighing a problem. His voice a blade hidden in silk, he says, “Even an average mind could determine what it is I’m about to do to you, and I’m sure yours already has. If I’ve misread, if there is a moment you dislike, unfortunately I can’t imagine you’ll be able to tell me. That is what I like.” He leans closer and for the first time he sounds like there is something he wants, too. “Will you be good for me, John?”

“Yes,” John whispers. “God, whatever you want -- yes.”  
“Good boy,” Sherlock murmurs, and the words are over so quickly that their punch comes after, but it does come and John is moaning, his eyes squeezed shut, all the monstrous secrets of his nights filling him up, how he turned Sherlock into a vision, a prayer, this terrible thing that would save him, a wet and wicked nightmare now digging its teeth into his wrists, now opening his mouth, now letting itself in, choking him, making him whole. Sherlock’s cock is thin and rigid and it pumps in and out of John, down his throat, lingers til he gags, pops out with John’s saliva still on it, twitches when his tongue touches the tip, traces his lips, vanishes when John opens his mouth messily and chokes on what is no longer there. 

“You look lovely like this,” Sherlock observes, maddeningly calm. “I thought of finishing in your mouth, but now I think I’d much rather cover your face. What do you think?”

John says something, starts to, before Sherlock’s cock is shoved roughly back in his mouth, muffling him, and he groans around it, his eyes welling, suppressing the urge to choke. It’s too deep and he wants to push himself away and he feels his hands bound at the small of his back, a reminder of places he cannot cross. 

“Yes, on your face sounds lovely,” Sherlock is murmuring. “You’ve been so good. Would you like a reward?” He pulls out of John’s mouth for a moment and runs a hand along his cheek. 

“Please,” says John, and then there is a beat before it comes, dampening his face, sudden and strong and slick. Sherlock sighs. A second wave, then it’s over. They stay still. John does not look up; he is afraid of what he might see. 

After a moment, Sherlock grunts and buttons his trousers then he kneels behind John and undoes the belt around his wrists. It’s an awkward procedure and John feels the fire fading from him, turning into rain. In the aftermath of desire, Sherlock is clumsy and fumbles with the knots. At last the belt comes off and John’s hands are free. He does not know what to do with them. He reaches up and wipes the mess from his face. 

Sherlock has moved away and is walking toward the couch. John stands up uneasily, wavering on his new legs (they feel new, yes: like they have been given to him). The room is vast and clouded. He suddenly hears the voices milling together outside, overflowing and troubling each other with the late and wandering stories of the day. “Sherlock,” he says. 

“Hm?”

Of course. “Don’t you think we ought to say something?”

Sherlock scoffs audibly, flops on the couch. “Not much to say, is there? The act is quick and does not linger.”

John presses on. “It would mean a lot to me if we could talk.”

“Oh, John.” Sherlock sounds bored. “Talking requires a back and forth, an exchanging of ideas. I have no thoughts on the matter. You were there, I took. If you insist on talking, it will be a fusillade of nonsense that does not require my contribution. Might as well do it from your bedroom.” He looks at John, pointedly. “Seems fitting, no?”

The joke amuses him and he chuckles as John recedes, closing the door between them. 

 

***

 

John is not surprised: it’s Sherlock, after all. He lets exasperation take the place of fear. He lets himself replay the encounter as a missive of something richer; that night he imagines Sherlock coming to him in his room and pinning his wrists in the dark, lowering himself unbearably, running his tongue over John’s mouth, whispering _You passed the test. You passed_. In John’s dream, they make love until he is sore and then Sherlock ties him to the bed and puts a hand over his mouth to keep him from shouting as he wanks him past endurance, climaxing in a stifled howl of pain. John wakes up and there is dust falling through the sunlight. 

It has happened before, of course. These moments repeat themselves until they burn out or change course into something new. At uni, with a boy who checked his watch when John was on his knees. (He loved that, how careless it was.) They would pass each other in the hallways and the boy would reach for him, pinch him sharply on the wrist and John would carry the burn for the remainder of the day. They never fucked but the boy attributed this to the girl he was seeing. I like other things anyway, he told John. Watching him crawl across a room. Slipping a finger inside him. Calling him names that left little wounds. They wrote a few letters after graduation but John’s were too honest and the boy’s too uncertain and after five or so messages they let each other go, allowing the history they had shared to become a passage they would each remember differently. John carried his in the bottom of his shoes. 

And in the army too, more discreet of course but still it was there, a little restlessness that became desire, the eyes of a soldier scanning him for weakness and how weak he was, crumpling at the knees, but sturdy too, firm even when he was adrift in the tempest of his fantasies, begging when he was asked to and laughing about it later, the memory making him shiver, his happiness taking the shape of a fruit. He wasn’t in love that time. They fucked, secretive and sometimes and hard. _Good boy_ the soldier called him and John thought, _Am I_? He repeated the question to himself. When he was injured and sent back to England, he longed for it sometimes, the heat and the closeness, but soon that faded and he was surprised to find himself vacant, empty, waiting for something new. 

He tried women for a while after that, worked himself inwards and tried to discover if the little colored stones of desire could hit him there, too. Sometimes they did: sometimes a wire would twitch and he would feel the pleasant emptiness of contentment washing over him. He bathed himself in the river of this petaled curiosity. He kissed a woman and felt her mouth turn to smoke beneath his. When they fucked, she would ask him to stay on top of her; he would do it, feeling unsure, and she would kiss him and he would float in the blackness of their eyes shut between them, bumping around the galaxy of his ineptitude. He always came, to be kind; he imagined a hand around his throat and then he turned her over, fucked her from behind, let his insides spill deceitfully into hers. 

Sherlock Holmes was altogether a different breed. Well, of course. John knew it instantly, walking into that room at Bart’s, and he was grateful at first, permitting himself the onslaught of madness, catching himself at a standstill watching him, all sleek-jawed and pale-skinned and sometimes hopelessly disheveled, breaking things in the kitchen, careless and cruel with his face pressed to the window. John loves that. He distances himself from it at first: _I love the way he doesn’t look at me. I love thinking about how his cock would fill me up. I love it, I love it._ Later it does come, and he is surprised and relieved at its dullness: they are on a case and Sherlock is bent over a corpse, muttering, and backs abruptly into John which startles them both and Sherlock looks over at John with unmisted eyes and says quickly _Sorry_ , and it is something about the way he says it, the way he tosses it off between them when they are standing by a dead body, Lestrade rattling senselessly behind them, and John thinks _I love you_.

Sherlock asked him not to speak about it and he won’t. He thinks about what kind of conversation they’d have and the possibilities drive him mad. _Sometimes I wank to thoughts of you making me bleed. Not great for a doctor, eh_? A joke, but barely. Sherlock will not dignify it with a response. John will try again. _Never really knew I was gay til uni, but sometimes you can let that slide, folly of youth and all that._ He will grow a little furtive, try harder. _Are you gay, then? Always knew you were a bit funny?_ Even in his thoughts he can’t speak honestly. Sherlock was right: better not to talk.

One night Lestrade pings them for a case and they go, wheeling through the frozen streets. It’s been a week since Sherlock had John on his knees and in that time he has spoken to him about everything but: severed heads in the freezer, the chemical composition of a variety of bombs, the distance traveled by a parakeet during its annual migration. John listens and says little. Now Sherlock is rattling off the capabilities of a Colt M1911 pistol, the weapon in question at the scene of the crime to which they’re headed. He is talking brightly, moving his limbs in freefall. And John feels it too, the electric London air, the goodness of chaos. Why he likes Sherlock and what Sherlock has done to him, might do to him again: the promise of a thrill. Yes, fucked or not: the pleasure of being beaten matched only by the sick delight of Sherlock’s indifference. Sometimes he wanks to the thought of begging while Sherlock finishes a book above him. It drives him wild, the thought of having to earn something. The thought of being less than good. He keeps pace with Sherlock now and when they arrive at the crime scene Lestrade is bellowing among the bright yellow lights and John feels like he has come home, like home is a feeling in his veins. 

“Damage?” Sherlock asks. 

“One dead, ‘s far as we can tell,” Lestrade says, sounding pained. “Young guy, over there by the sewer. Gunshot wound, Colt M1911 like I texted you.” Sherlock has already moved past him and Lestrade turns to John, shaking his head. “Never stops for a minute. All right there, John?”

John takes a moment to nod, be the antithesis to Sherlock. “Something like it.”

The corpse is fresh, only a few hours old. Someone across the street heard the gunshot and phoned the police. It’s facedown, mired in blood, and Sherlock is aglow with delight. “Couldn’t have asked for better,” he’s saying, “John, come over here and check the coagulation of blood. No prints on the gun?” 

Lestrade is almost offended. “Of course not. None that we found. We do have a basic understanding of how this all works, y’know.”

“It is not inconceivable that you would overlook something entirely obvious,” Sherlock continues. “Case in point, the perfume found on the secretary bludgeoned in her flat.”

“We got that,” Lestrade counters, confused. “Chanel No. 5.”

“The boyfriend worked at a parfumerie. John, blood?”

“Dead, only a few hours. You were right.” Even with the barrier of gloves, passing his hands over the purple marks wakes him up. 

“Of course I was.” Sherlock looks around, itching for a game. “Suspects?”

“We’re checking,” Lestrade offers. “So far we’ve got the bloke who called it in but no one else. Have to do a sweep of the building. Anderson’ll take care of that.” He pauses, resigns himself with a grimace to the inevitable. “You got anything?”

***

They come back to Baker Street flushed and joyous. In the morning, Lestrade will phone again and off they’ll go, tracking down the janitor Sherlock spotted with gun grease on the cuffs of his sleeves. _Lestrade misses these things because he looks inward_ , Sherlock said to John and John felt as if a door had opened. _At the scene of a crime a pool of onlookers comes forward and among them is often the criminal. He wants to check his handiwork, he wants to see the gruesome admirers. He wants to know he has been seen._

 _Yes_ , said John. _Yes, I see._

In the flat Sherlock is taking off his scarf and his shoes and he is feeling expansive, he is motioning John toward him, he is touching John’s neck then slapping the wall with mirth, he is tousled hair and elegant limbs and John wants him so badly he can hardly breathe. He lets Sherlock touch him, then retreat, then caress him again, pull him onto the couch where they both regard each other in the perfect endlessness of a finite moment. 

“What are we doing?” John asks. He means it to sound careless, like Sherlock would. 

“Fucking, eventually,” Sherlock replies. He leans back and runs a hand through John’s hair; in that moment, the feeling is enough to fuel John’s fantasies for years. “I assume you’ll let me. For now, increments. In my experience, it is beneficial to slowly ramp up desire. It ensures longevity.”

Longevity. John shakes his head, in love. “‘In your experience’? Why don’t you tell me about that.”

Sherlock shrugs. “There’s not very much to tell.”

“You’re gay, then.”

“Curious. I enjoy a good challenge.”

John laughs. “Experimenting, the great Sherlock Holmes. Severed heads and throbbing pricks.” The joke is obscene and he draws back for a moment. But Sherlock looks at him, thoughtful, and emboldened he presses on. “You’ve fucked men, then.”

“A few. Never my bag, really.”

“Oh.”  
Sherlock recognizes a misstep even if he does not understand it. He deepens his grasp on John’s hair. “Sexual desire is not something I experience very strongly, if at all. I imagine it makes my life a great deal easier than yours, in perhaps the only instance of such a thing. I find you compelling, but my interest does not extend to what you might call passion.” He turns John’s head toward his, regards him seriously. “Can you understand?”

John is wounded, but he will return to it later. Instead, he lets himself turn the roots of grief into humor. _Sherlock Holmes wants to be fuck buddies_ , he marvels. “What do you want from me, then?” he hears himself asking.

“Submission,” comes Sherlock’s answer, readily. “It is diverting to me and it allows things to slow down in my mind.” When he senses John is uncertain, he elaborates. “In here it’s all cluttered. I hear everyone’s thoughts and the things I know have colors I cannot cancel out. Do you see? In your terms, you like being at my mercy because it gives you a sense of belonging when you feel you have been expelled from many places you have loved. If I hurt you, you believe it is what you deserve for these expulsions. I am at no one’s mercy but my own. What I cannot do to myself, I do to you. Do you understand?”

John thinks, _I will never be in love again the way I am tonight_. He says, “Yes. I think I understand.”

“Would you like to go to bed?” Sherlock asks.

This takes him by surprise and he reaches inside himself to find that he is disappointed. “Oh. Well, it’s early, I was going to stay up and read for a bit --”

“No, you misunderstand.” Sherlock tightens his fingers and John’s scalp leaps into bliss. “I said, would you like to go to bed?”

They do. It is long and slow and wonderful. Sherlock makes John beg, softly at first then through sobs. When John comes, and he does for the first time now with Sherlock, his cock is in Sherlock’s hand and it is better than his fantasies. He cannot remember what it is to feel wounded or ashamed. When he opens his mouth to cry out, Sherlock’s mouth covers it and they kiss until John has finished, until the streams of his come have finished striking Sherlock in the dark. _I love, I love_ , John thinks wildly. Sherlock leaves for his own room; soon it will be morning.

***

 

It goes like this: when a case is particularly good, they fuck. When Lestrade makes them laugh, they catch each other’s eyes over a corpse and later they hold the same gaze while Sherlock ties John’s hands to the coat rack, while he squeezes his balls, while he watches John’s face for tears. Sherlock buys a whip; using it feels ridiculous and he strikes John with something else, something John cannot see when he is blindfolded and bent over the bed, and when he is able to look behind him he sees Sherlock fucking Holmes holding a backscratcher and smirking. He moves purposefully, as if he is wading through the many thoughts clouding the room. He is quiet except for when he beats John, when tiny groans of exertion appear and John turns them into howls of pleasure in his mind. He is beaten and bruised all the time. He wears the marks like medals.

Here is what John Watson knows: Sherlock likes having his cock sucked. Sherlock likes dirty talk, spread over an encounter like beautiful leaking vines. Sherlock will not touch or speak to John after sex. When Sherlock is drunk -- it has happened once and never again, but John lengthens it so that it becomes a when -- he is tender and curious. He asks John what he likes as he runs his mouth along the scars on his chest, and when John tells him he nods and John can see him filing it away, knows that it will reappear in the kitchen, in his bed when he wakes up with a mouth around his half-hard prick, in the shower when Sherlock’s come mixes with the water. 

Here are the things Sherlock has done once: gotten himself drunk off a mug of mulled wine. Hogtied John and slid a candle inside him, pulled it out later to light it and drip the wax along his spine where he could not see. Bound John to the bed and left him there for hours while he went out on a case (when he came back and John’s arms were finally free, he knew what to do with them and slipped them around Sherlock, who allowed it for a moment). 

Here are things Sherlock has done many times: gagged John with his belt to keep him from shouting as he traces the tip of his prick in a circle around John’s hole. Taken his mouth in the shower, turned it into a heady vessel, wrecked it with his sweat and come til John can taste him even when he is alone. Called John lovely, filthy, delicious, good. Shaved John’s pubic hair with a straight razor to mark him for a time, working seriously and quietly as John moaned and tried not to laugh (when he recalled it later, he heard the sound of the water in the basin and was reminded of a postcard a cousin had once sent him from Kentucky where she mentioned washing her son that summer in a pool in the backyard). Removed John’s hands from his shirt, coolly. Abandoned the flat for days. Stepped away once an encounter was done, closed the door, made himself tea. Written the following texts: 

_Come home now so I can punish you._

_Where are you?_

_I wonder what you’ll think of me when I show you what I’ve been thinking of today._

John will not let Sherlock inside him. Not yet. He calls it self-preservation. He knows his love is not returned. He knows it is different for Sherlock. He watches him at his laptop and sees his eyes light up with the same fire that fills them when he is beating John. They are different names for the same thing. It is not like that for John. In the afternoons, he makes himself lunch, he reads a book, he hears their bodies moving through the flat like dreamstruck cats in the cold. At night, Sherlock comes into his bed and it is a revelation. He knows what it is to be uninjured. He wakes up and the feeling still stays. 

Sherlock finds him in the spot of sunlight that comes through the curtains and hits the floor, he wraps his arms around him, he draws him to the couch, he is tall and bright and lit with fury. He is less strong than John but John gives himself to him; he is more purposeful than John and he has canals through his brain that turn into floods and he sees the many sparks that cover John’s body, the flicker and flames of childhood and adolescence and garden walls in Yorkshire and hands tied in the attic and piers where boys rubbed their legs together in hopeless shame. “I know what you like,” Sherlock murmurs.

“I know,” John whispers, “I know.”

Sherlock pulls him onto his lap, drizzles his fingers against John’s hips. He isn’t hard yet but John is, swelling and sweating and yearning, and John presses down on Sherlock’s lap, tangles his fingers in those licorice curls, tries to kiss Sherlock who moves his mouth to John’s neck, biting softly, leaving small footprints in the snow. John winces in joy; he can feel Sherlock getting harder now, he imagines that cock hurting him, he tries to kiss Sherlock again and Sherlock puts one hand in his hair and jerks his head back, slaps him hard. 

“Not until I give you permission,” he says.

John’s face is hot, forming a new shape around the imprint of the slap. He shifts his weight, trying to let his cock meet Sherlock’s, feeling the sick and steady burn of want spread its roots in his body. 

“God, you’re a sight,” murmurs Sherlock. “All hard and ready to take me. Are you ready?” His voice is close to John’s ear, purring. “Do you want me inside you? Do you want to be mine?”

Sherlock is raising his hips torturously, letting their cocks meet for a moment, pulling back, watching. John’s head falls, rests on Sherlock’s shoulder. 

“Not very good at speaking, are you,” Sherlock murmurs. “What will I do with you?”

“Anything,” John manages. “Anything, anything. Do. To me. Anything.”

Sherlock laughs. “That lovely mouth of yours. I like you so much better when you can’t speak.” John groans, going limp. “Do you know what I’d like to do to you? Keep you tied up here for days and have people come and look at you, use that filthy hole of yours, make you weep.”

“Jesus,” says John, nearly in tears.

“Will you do something for me?” Sherlock whispers.  

“Yes. Whatever you want. Anything.”

“I’m going to ask you to take a bit of pain for me.”

Sherlock curls himself against John, moves in small tremors until he has his hands at John’s neck. His fingers are dry, deliberate. He tightens them around John’s neck. At first it is like several bubbles appearing at once; then like sucking in water instead of air, the walls of a cave collapsing, the heaving belly of a tunnel. John can’t breathe. He makes sounds in search of air. 

"Good boy,” murmurs Sherlock. “Taking what I give you. I can see you like it.”

And oh, John does: against promise, or reason, or hope, John loves feeling Sherlock choke him. In a moment of absurd longing, he wishes Sherlock would kill him. The violence of the thought shocks him and his cock softens a little. Sherlock, if he feels it, says nothing; he ruts against John as he cuts his air off, half-snarling, and John looks at him for a moment and sees a wild absence in his eyes. Sherlock sees it too and takes one hand off John neck, holds him still with the other, hits him brutally on the side of his face once, twice, three times.

“Please,” begs John, hardly knowing why. “Please.”

“More,” says Sherlock. “More, and I’ll let you come.”

“Please hurt me,” John begs. “Please, I can’t take it anymore. Please let me come.”

“Not a chance,” and Sherlock groans, comes in his pants against John’s thigh. And John comes later too, in his bed, alone, remembering how Sherlock’s hand felt as it struck him. 

Submission feels like grace, absolution. Sherlock controls him. This was true before they fucked and now the closeness of their bodies crystallizes it, reduces John to what he believes himself to be when he is within the walls of 221B Baker Street: a mouth, a hole, a thing. Sherlock tells him this often, cupping John’s chin in the palm of his hand. You belong to me, he says in the quiet haze of desire. Once he came up behind John in the kitchen and pressed both hands to the side of his head, vice-like, and John could feel him breathing by his ear, the great threads of Sherlock Holmes’ mind softening, unweaving, and the thought of their closeness was enough to get him hard, take Sherlock’s fingers when they moved to his mouth with a quiet moan, suck as he thrusted stupidly against the sink in excitement because he could feel Sherlock’s cock stiffening behind him and surely he must feel something else too and Sherlock murmured _What are you?_ and around his fingers John groaned _Yours_ and Sherlock said _Good boy_ then stepped away. 

There are different kinds of nightmares now. Sometimes still he wakes up and the crackling of artillery shells calls to him in the distance but sometimes too he is in a black room and Sherlock is gone. These are the nightmares he carries with him all day. On a case, he feels himself go jelly-limbed; Sherlock is there beside him with his eyes elsewhere. In the flat they will touch each other but here the space between them is insurmountable. It’s not unmanageable, but John knows this is no way to live either. 

But he lets it sustain. He lets Sherlock consume him with the unbridled mania of his wants. He lets this thing inside him grow, turn winedark and calloused, permits the moments of Sherlock’s absence to mean less than the urgency of his hereness. John becomes to himself what he will not let Sherlock be: restrained, indifferent, oblivious. John will take care of himself. John is a grown man, for fuck’s sake, and getting beaten til he comes by a high-functioning sociopath was his choice. He will let it be. He will let it be enough. 

***

 

They talk often, but about corpses, Sherlock’s lack of appetite, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft’s meaningless texts, Lestrade’s genial incompetence, London as a faded city. John wishes Sherlock would tell him about himself. He wants to ask him, _Were you liked at uni?_ (The answer, he is sure, is no, but what he wants is the question.) He wants to say, _You don’t want a relationship, fine. We’re not lovers. We’re just fucking. But we share a flat and a landlady and generally a life. Ask me how my day was._ When he pulls this, Sherlock replies, “I know how your day was. Two alarms, overslept, one coffee, holiday shopping, met Lestrade for drinks, haven’t finished your book.” 

“You’re missing the point,” John counters.

“Hardly. It seems, in fact, that you are missing mine.”

They argue frequently. Sherlock is a fucking terror. There are days when he is sexless, stark, and these days stretch so thin and so long that John breaks a mug in the center of the room, enraged, and Sherlock nods at the shards on the floor and looks away. “Did you forget?” John shouts. “Did you bloody forget?”

“I don’t understand the question,” Sherlock replies coolly.

“I am not a high-functioning sociopath,” John growls. “I eat and drink and read and want, unlike you. There are things I need and, god help me, I need them from you.”

Sherlock makes an ugly face, twisting his mouth around something unpalatable. “You are unpleasant like this,” he finally says. 

Sometimes it is the other way around. Sometimes Sherlock comes to him and says, “Strip,” and when John is naked he wraps his belt around his neck and tightens it til John sees sparks at the edge of his world and feels Sherlock lean in toward him and whisper, “This is what you asked for and this is what I am prepared to give you. Complete annihilation.” John gasps, writhing, and Sherlock purrs, “Good. There are very few things I like more than the sight of you struggling. Do you know how hard it gets me, to think of you like this? Do you know how much I want to hurt you?” And this brings John back, anchors him to something he can call true: _I am wanted. I am needed._ A little later, when Sherlock is securing ropes he ducks beneath the bed to fasten their ends around the bedposts and in the silence of his disappearance John allows himself to think, _I am loved._

What does he know of being loved? A boy at uni who only saw him in empty rooms. A flatmate who fucks him out of curiosity. 

Sherlock doesn’t sleep. John hears him in his room at four in the morning, tearing things apart. He passes his bedroom when he gets up for water from the sink, making it look like he’s lost his way but surely Sherlock must know; and he sees Sherlock kneeling by the bed, running his hands over the floor. 

“Can’t sleep?” John chuckles, letting the words run out of his throat too quickly.

Sherlock moves as if he’s suddenly woken up, raises his eyebrows in a silent yawn, runs a hand over his face. “Easily observed. I’m eagerly anticipating the day when you ask a question of real worth, John.” But his voice is tired, not cruel. 

John takes this as the closest thing to an invitation Sherlock will give him and he slips into the bedroom where he’s never been allowed during their lovemaking. Not that he was ever told as much, but he knew -- Sherlock would pull them together on the couch in the living room, or slide his body into John’s bed at night, but when an interaction had run its course and John sensed that Sherlock had no more use for his longing, he would retreat into the bedroom they never saw together and shut the door. During the day he leaves it open sometimes and John will pass by, notice its sparseness, feel a tender knot gathering in his chest when he notes Sherlock hasn’t cleaned. He comes in now, wants to give his bad leg away so he can kneel beside him. He waits for Sherlock to say something cruel but it doesn’t come. “Aren’t you tired?” John asks.

Sherlock smiles. “Yes, very much so.”

“Would you like to go to bed?” It’s a joke, recalling his earlier seduction. Sherlock understands and looks at John as if he’s never before accounted for the space he occupies in a room. John laughs, carrying on. “Poor choice of words coming from me. I know.”

“Do you wish the roles were reversed?” asks Sherlock bluntly.

The question throws him off balance for a moment, but he’s had the earth taken from beneath him before. “Ah. No, no not really.”

“Not really?” It takes him a moment to realize Sherlock is trying not to laugh.

“No, you bastard. D’you think I’d be any good at that? Can’t keep up with you normally.” The thought depresses him, but he likes making Sherlock laugh and it warms something inside him too. 

“Have you ever thought about it?”

John considers for a moment. “Only in the way -- only in the way that sometimes I want to kill you when I’m angry.” He grins. “But I can’t imagine I’m the first person you’ve made this way.”

He means: here in this room, a little angry and in love. But Sherlock blinks and observes, “You think I do this often.”

“Well, don’t you? Haven’t you?”

“While I’m flattered that you’ve equated skill with experience, no.”

“No submissive boyfriends in uni, then. No secret lovers I should be aware of.” John is feeling brave and smiling. 

“Submissive boyfriends, no. Girlfriends, occasionally.”

“Oh.”

“Not anymore, of course. I do quite a bit of rearranging just to create time for you.”

“Thanks. So no girlfriends, then. A singular occurrence, a no more thing.”

“It seemed logical at the time.” Sherlock is reciting his past with the coolness of a museum guest. “Women have always found something appealing in my abundance of total indifference and I was curious, highly. They were willing; it made for good research.”

“Sometimes when you talk you sound like a serial killer.”

Sherlock ignored this. “Never did much for me, regrettably.”

“So you don’t like women, then.”

“It isn’t that. You may have noticed that I am not overly fond of most people.”

“I have noticed, yes.”

“I find women compelling and occasionally beautiful. Their beauty generally carries me only as far as the first line of a conversation. Most people are the same.”

“Men, then.”

“Of course.” He looks at John, one side of his mouth curling up into a smirk. _I’ve just been hit on by Sherlock Holmes_ , John thinks. _Sherlock Holmes has hit on me._ “The vagaries of desire are numerous. Reactions are of interest to me.” He is still looking at John, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Yours especially are quite good.”

“They come from a good place,” John replies. 

Their nearness is startling to him, as though they had suddenly reached for each other’s hands across a table and found them. John tries to memorize Sherlock in this moment, wrapped messily in his bathrobe, curls tumbling down his brow, appearing with the wonderful clarity that bodies sometimes do after sex is over when they are loved, but he knows he will forget it too, that he will be aroused again or angry and Sherlock’s body will seem hateful or like the necessity of a room. But he is happy here, in this moment. They are awake in London as the winter night grows restless. They are many things to each other at once. 

It is this idea that he carries with him throughout the day and into the next week, the comma bridging the space he knows and the space he has not considered. He lets liminality cradle him with claws. He lives in the place where words mean both one thing and another. Sherlock comes up behind him while he is reading on the couch and covers him in his arms, limbs of sad spaghetti. He is quiet and John can feel his cheek pressed against his neck. They stay like that, softened by each other. Then Sherlock pulls away and walks to the door, opens it, leaves. When he comes back, John has not moved. Sherlock looks at him, makes a noise of disgust, and closes the door to his room. 

It’s almost Christmas now; the sounds on the streets are getting louder. Sherlock is playing the violin. John wraps himself up and leaves, pacing once, twice, in front of 221B then crosses, heading for Regent’s Park. The sun is setting; he buys a cup of coffee on the corner and feels the wind pass through him. The roads are wet, dusted with snow. What a month, what a month. 

He cuts through a flock of tourists and they flutter back into place, squawking. He thinks of Christmas, with all its sticky kindness. He thinks of being a boy out in the country, on holiday, solemnly building a kite in his grandfather’s cabin. He passes into the park, reaching into his coat for his gloves. He would like to tell Sherlock about that cabin; he would like to tell him the many things the kite meant. It is not an unnatural desire, nor is his longing for men. He remembers being very young, scaling a garden wall with a friend; he remembers how their bodies crushed awkwardly against each other and how he knew something then, like a street full of houses had suddenly lit up inside him. 

The park is silent, the road he’s on nearly empty. People are in their flats, in front of their fireplaces, reading, in love, asleep. He feels his way through the snow. It was like this in Afghanistan, a flurry of dust and sand and the shouts of strangers he could turn into silence, the way Sherlock can turn him mute. He felt solitary there, but there is a difference between solitude and loneliness: solitude is the sand dunes and the gunfire and the muddy cots he held his breath in and wanked on and where he rarely slept. Solitude is heavy, like being borne across the sea by a hawk. It gave him something, a reddened sureness in his stomach. He knew who he was. War makes you terrified, skinless, raw. It made him a polished stone. 

Loneliness is what he feels in London. Before Sherlock, when the drizzling rain drove him mad with boredom, he prayed for it to be the stampede of enemy feet approaching. He sat rock-faced in cafes. He wrote, quickly and vengefully and only once, on a napkin beneath his coffee, _This is bullshit. I’ll throw myself off a building before I let this city kill me._ It never came to that. He met Sherlock. Desire turns things temporarily to light. Yes, he accepts this now: if it wasn’t love, it was still an awakening. A long sleep ended. A fixation that slowed his pulse, rooted him here. Surely that was it: the ceasing of wanting to be elsewhere. He wanted new things: to be seen, to be fucked, to be hurt. It was this that made his love extraordinary, that makes all loves so: he wanted the imperfect gracelessness of being alive. 

But loneliness is what he feels now, even with Sherlock. Love flares like a bruise and disappears if not reapplied. The pain of their coupling overtook him until it became all he was. He thinks of the goodness of being beaten, of being bound, of choking and sobbing and coming, of his dreams turned into flesh, wanting Sherlock and getting Sherlock and wanting him still. It is like war, in some ways -- an endless struggle between what is good and what is right. Love was able to carry him only as far as fantasy. Now he is in love with a man who does not love him back. Now he gives himself, body and soul, to a man who runs a life full of experiments. The silence between them is impassable. He will not overcome it. It could be done together, yes: if they were in love, they could scale the mountains of their unholy desperation. But they are not in love. John Watson loves. John Watson is alone. Solitude could be borne; loneliness will kill him like war never could. 

He is in Regent’s Park. He is in London. A few joggers pass him, their breath whistling in the cold. It is getting dark. He will go home. He will tell Sherlock that he loves him. He will leave Baker Street.

***

Sherlock is on the couch when he returns, fiddling with the strings of his bathrobe. John enters carefully, shutting the door with a momentous click. Sherlock hears him come in, of course, but he does not move. This gives John strength. “Sherlock,” he says. 

“Yes?” He draws out the word.

“I want to tell you something.”

Sherlock sighs and closes his eyes. 

“I want to talk about what we’ve been doing.”

“We’ve been over this before, I believe. I had nothing to say on the subject then, and I have even less to say now.”

“Yes,” says John. “I know. I’m not expecting anything from you. I have something to say.”

“Do it quickly, then. I’m tired and was on my way to bed.”

John takes a breath, holds it, lets it go. “This -- thing. This, this between us. Whatever it is we’re doing. It’s got to stop. I can’t take it anymore.”

Sherlock snorts. “Dull. You are better than this, you know, otherwise I wouldn’t bother. What’s brought this on, if I may be so boring as to ask?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Ah. In that case, don’t. I can help you there.” He sits up, turns his darkened slumber eyes to John. “Isn’t that what you like? When I take your thoughts away?”

A surge of want courses through John. “Of course it is.”

“Then why the sudden onslaught of noble reticence? Honestly, John. None of this is...sexy.” The word sounds funny coming from Sherlock and he knows it, batting it away with a hand in the air. “Very well, then. What have you been thinking about?”

“You know this isn’t easy for me, Sherlock. I can’t reason things away. I’m not like you. There are things I,” he casts around wildly, “there are things I thought I couldn’t live without. You, hurting me.” He feels the beginnings of panic and grows furious. “I wanted that for so long, d’you know? I thought it’d be enough. It was what I dreamed about.” He feels ridiculous. He presses on. “But it’s not, d’you see?”

“No,” says Sherlock icily. “I don’t see.”

John moves forward, stands beside the couch, is taller than Sherlock now, how rarely this is ever true, and he knows what he could do, he knows that if things had been otherwise, if he had been born differently, he could visit everything Sherlock has done to him back on its creator and more, could break his arm and call it passion, and for a moment Sherlock sees it too, sizing him up, his eyes suddenly bright with wonder. But John says, “I love you, you bastard. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, and god if I could tear this bloody thing out of me I would. Believe me, I’d do it a thousand times over until there was nothing left in me that wanted you. But I can’t. All of this, this thing we do together, all of it -- it’s got to end.”

Sherlock is very still and John wonders, idly, for a moment, if he’s gone to sleep. He has sunken into himself, grown swamplike and silent. John can see the moments of their shared life moving behind his eyes, setting off muffled containable fireworks. He watches Sherlock receive the information he has given him, process it, hold it before him to examine. An invisible scroll unfolds before them in the room, scrawled over with John’s wanton love. Sherlock reads it, makes notes. He is far away. He is in his mind palace. John is trembling and he repeats, hoping to find comfort in the resurgence of the phrase, _This is not love. This is not love. This is not love._

“You want me to reciprocate,” Sherlock says eventually.

“I can see that you don’t.”

“It seems odd,” muses Sherlock. “What would you get out of it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What would you get out of my love?”

“Christ,” says John. 

“It’s a fair question. What would change? We would continue to share a flat, cooperate on cases, converse with each other as we normally do. We would have sex. What more would you get? The assurance that I am faithful. I have been, it seems only logical to reduce the risk of disease. So what else is there?”

“People fall in love,” says John. “It’s what they do. They live together, they have sex, they argue. They share a life.”

“Is that love?” 

“For Christ’s sake, Sherlock. What else can I say? I have these dreams, these bloody unbearable dreams, where the only thing standing between me and offing myself in the Thames is you. I can’t explain it any better than that. I want something beyond you hurting me -- I want the thing on the other side.” 

Sherlock is still for a moment. Then he says, slightly slurred, “What if the thought of that frightened me?”

“What?” asks John incredulously.

“What if that was not what I wanted?”

“I can bloody well see that’s not what you want.”

“You are not listening. What if that was not what I wanted because I was afraid?”

He is speaking hypothetically and John scans him hysterically to see if he is being mocked. Sherlock is watching him, his head tilted to one side. There is something like shyness in his eyes. He is watching John and John feels seen. 

“Are you afraid?” he asks at last.

Sherlock shakes his head and sighs. “The question no longer seems relevant.”

***

John moves out in the new year. Nothing else to be done. He packs his bags over Christmas, locking the door to his room. He passes Sherlock in the kitchen once every few weeks and they move past each other like ghosts. When Lestrade texts them for a case, Sherlock responds; John watches him leave the flat, hail a cab, spirit away. Lestrade texts him sometimes, but warily -- he knows enough to keep his distance. _Pub tonight? Haven’t seen you in a while._ John never answers. Best to shut all the doors at once. 

He finds a new flat on Charles Lane, across the park. The landlord is small and scowling; he scratches an unfortunate itch as they climb the stairs. There is only one room this time. The kitchen is not where it should be. “A lucky find,” says the landlord. “Prime location, right by Regent’s. You won’t find a better view than this.” John crosses to the window. London swells beneath him, bloated and grey. The landlord is fiddling with his hat. “What d’you say?”

“I’ll take it,” says John. 

The newness of the place feels barren. He wanders through its smallness at night, turning on the lights. He sits at the table and runs his hands along its edges. Nothing feels like what he has known before. He lives in a world without the moon. 

He still dreams, sometimes. He dreams of Sherlock finding him, though he did not tell him the address. Love would transcend that: love would deliver the address to him. He dreams of opening the door and Sherlock standing there, covered in snow, crossing the threshold, embracing him. Taking Sherlock to bed, casting off his clothes, or slowly undressing him in the lamplight, bitten chests and the angular rippling flesh of his quiet strength, waking in the morning with the dream still beside him. In the dark, he whispers, _You found me. You came back._ And in the dark he hears Sherlock say, _Of course I did. I’m here now. I love you._

It is nights like these that he cannot give up, though he has given up almost everything else. He will make new friends, find another companion. He will tell them, _You’ll never believe it but I used to catch criminals. At my age, can you imagine?_ Those days will seem to him like a wing of medieval art in a museum: wounded, expansive. He sees Sherlock in the paper sometimes. When it is delivered to him in the mornings, he throws it away. 

It is a night like this that he is passing a little drunk, apart from the snowfall. He hears the gentle stillness of winter covering the streets. It is three in the morning. His body is swollen with longing. He paged through a small novel at eight and has forgotten it since. He is sitting in the chair he has bought, he is thinking of the day to come, and he hears the heat gathering and dissembling beneath the boards, puckering and clattering, and he listens til it takes shape, til it turns into a knock at the door.

He gets up, he moves his heavy limbs across the room. He thinks, _A neighbor who wants to borrow change maybe. The landlord asking for early rent?_ He opens the door. Sherlock stands beyond it, dusted with snow. 

“Ah,” says John.

They are quiet for a moment, struck by their nearness. Then Sherlock crosses the space between them, stands beside John. “I am sorry,” he says. “I am not brave like you. I was afraid.” He looks at the floor, gathering strength, then he looks up and his eyes meet John’s at last. “I love you.”

***

What is it like, that first time they are in love?

John has imagined it many times. A restless grappling, or the shyness of a recognition. 

Uncertain limbs, wrong words. Someone will misstep. They will laugh. Drawing nearer, they will touch the body beneath them and marvel at its strangeness. 

Is it like that, then?

Sherlock presses his body against John’s. He is close. He is here. 

John raises his body to meet him. He will release. He will forgive. 

It is like that between them.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone at all has read this, I'm incredibly touched and grateful and I hope we pass little messages back and forth to each other in the comments. This is my first Sherlock fic and it's far from great but oh boy was it a joy to write.


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